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The following message for the moment is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "When a King Knelt to Cry." And Jesus, seeing the city, wept over it. There are many ways in which you can see a city. A young girl coming to the city, clutching her diploma and looking for her first

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job, sees it as the place of opportunity. The poet perhaps sees it as William Wordsworth saw London when he stood on Westminster Bridge in 1802 and described what he saw with these words, "Earth hath not anything to show more fair, a sight so touching in its majesty." When the businessman looks at the city,

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he sees it in terms of markets, taxes, location, transportation. But when Jesus saw the city, he wept over it. The derelict coming to the city out of the shadowed world which is his, looks upon the city as the place where he can get a buck without a moral discourse. The social commentator sees the city in

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terms of statistics, crime, poverty, birth rates, and death rates. But when Jesus saw the city, he wept over it. Remember, please, that on that first Palm Sunday as Jesus entered Jerusalem, so did thousands of others. There was a law which said that all Jews who live within 20 miles of Jerusalem had to be present in the

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holy city at Passover. And not only that, but pious pilgrims came from all over the Middle East to be a part of the religious festivities. And when those pilgrims came to the top of Mount Olivet and looked across at Jerusalem, no honest, faithful Jew's heart could help but leap within him at the spectacle.

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But Jesus, the Lion of Judah, when he saw the city, he wept over it. And remember too that this was a joyous procession. They were throwing their garments on the ground, they were waving palms in celebration, they were crying out, "Hosanna, Hosanna, save now, save now." Jesus announced that if they did not cry out

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in songs of praise and adoration, the very stones would take up the melody. This was not a solemn moment, but a triumphant moment. Still, when Jesus saw the city, he wept over it. Jesus said on one occasion, "He who has seen me has seen the Father." And on another occasion he said, "I and the Father are one." And we as

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Christians understand Jesus to be very God of very God. That means that if Jesus was weeping over the city, then so God weeps over the city. We see nothing less here than God with a breaking heart. Why then, before the splendor that Jerusalem was at this holy and joyous season of the year, did Jesus on seeing the city

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weep over it? Well, students of human emotion tell us that there are basically five reasons for which people cry. They cry out of their need, they cry because they are afraid, they cry because they are angry, they cry because they are overcome with remorse, or they cry out of pain. And I would suggest to you this

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morning that Jesus wept because he was feeling profound emotional pain. And the words that he addressed to Jerusalem that day testify to this. First, Jesus weeps because he sees the impermanence of what humankind calls glorious. The Jews gloried in what they had accomplished in Jerusalem, crowned of

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course by the temple, which was made of white marble plated with gold, some of the stones 40 feet long and weighing more than a hundred tons. They were very proud of what they had accomplished, just as we today are proud of our architectural accomplishments, from the World Trade Center on one coast to the

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Golden Bridge on the other. We have a tendency to rejoice in our computers. We have made machines that can count faster than the minds that conceived of them. And we have a tendency also to measure our success in terms of our Rolex, our rolls, the Rothko we have hanging on the wall, or the vacation in West Palm Beach.

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But speaking of all of this, on that first Palm Sunday and to us today, Jesus said, "The days will come upon you when your enemies will besiege you and dash you to the ground and not leave one stone upon another." And within 40 years the Romans came and leveled the city of Jerusalem so that Josephus, the leading

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Jewish historian of the period, said that you could drive a plow across the face of Jerusalem and meet with not a single obstruction. And so it is with all human efforts. We create, we invent, we build, but in the end it all disappears. We are surpassed. What we have accomplished is put into museums where the curious of

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tomorrow look at the oddities of yesterday. The Jews of long ago thought that Jerusalem was eternal. It has not so proved to be. And we sometimes look at our own time and think of it in terms of all that has been accomplished in these days. But this time, too, will lose its reputation. The Jews were very proud of

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their thought. They saw Jerusalem as a center of wisdom. Indeed, they saw it in terms of philosophy and theology as the intellectual center of all of the world. And we rejoice in the fact that we have increased the rate of learning beyond that of any time that has come before. We are sometimes astonished by our

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scientific accomplishments. We refer to earlier days as primitive days of childish research, and we speak of our own time as a time of mature science. But it has been brought home to me many times as I have studied history that it is the so-called mature who have made the greatest catastrophes. We don't

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build jails to lock up children. We don't build prisons to incarcerate little toddlers. No, it is the so-called mature we put in those places. Our century, more than any other century in human history, is awash in blood. We have lived in an insane and a berserk time. If this is maturity, then this is the prelude to

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collapse. Like Jerusalem a long time ago, we long for green grass on the lawns of our lives and for roses given to us as applause for our accomplishments. But Jesus, quoting the psalmist from long before, said, "The grass withers, the flower fades, only the Word of God endures forever." It is folly to measure

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accomplishments by the impermanence of what we call wonderful. You have all heard of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse--war, famine, pestilence, and death. According to the stories, they ride throughout history, and wherever they ride, they leave behind them ruin and the odor of decay. But there is a legend

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which says that there was a fifth horseman, and he, being more sympathetic by nature, would ride ahead of the other four and try to warn the people of what was coming. But they were so caught up in the pride of their accomplishments, they were so satisfied with their material gains that they did not listen to him.

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And so the four horsemen descended with all the horror which was within their capacity. And later the fifth horseman went back, and seeing what had been wrought, wept over it. And the name of the fifth horseman was Reality. Jesus says to us, as he weeps, "Do not trust in the folly of your own impermanent

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accomplishments. Do not rest finally in your educational or scientific advance. Do not find your hope in your collected comforts." Now, I do not speak to you this morning as any Luddite. I don't think it is bad to build. I don't think it is evil to invent. I am not suggesting for one moment that ignorance is to be preferred

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over education. But we must not rest our ultimate confidence in these things, for to do so is the prelude to despair. And then Jesus cried over Jerusalem when he saw the groping blindness of human ideals. Listen to what he said on that first Palm Sunday. "Jerusalem, would that you knew the things that make for peace,

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but now they are hid from your eyes." Now mind you, Jerusalem in those days was a city on its knees. This was a holy time. It was the time of Passover. The whole city was at prayer. And still in the midst of this prayer, this intimacy with God, the city remained utterly blind to the things that make for peace, and held

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instead, clutched desperately, to its own ideals. You would think after surveying the centuries and having seen the high cost of hatred and the hell that militarism can bring, that we would have at last gotten to the place where we question our own human ideals. But that does not seem to be the case. We

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virtually ignore Jesus when he says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other necessary things will be added unto you." Suppose Christ were to be looking at Jerusalem today, twenty centuries after that first Palm Sunday. He would see a city still at war. He would see a city

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which has driven many of its own citizens from their homes, pushing them into refugee camps. I have walked the streets of those camps and seen the horror that exists there. Here is Israel, signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and those conventions say that no land that is held in dispute may have any property

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upon it destroyed until after a peace treaty has been signed. And Israel has sent in scores of bulldozers to knock down hundreds of Arab homes without any reparation whatever. They are signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and yet those conventions state that there can be no construction except for defense on any

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disputed lands until after such time as a treaty of peace has been signed. And every day Israel puts up more condos and more hotels in the very places which the conventions deny to them. What can we think when we see a people using machine guns on teenagers? Now make no mistake, I am not this morning attacking

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Israel. I know about the terrorism that comes from the Arab side. I know about the Scud rockets. I know about the treachery of the PLO. I could speak of any of these things, or for that matter I could speak of the tyranny of Mobutu in Africa, or Saddam Hussein pouring sulfuric acid on the Kurds. I could talk

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about what the Chinese did to the flower of their youth in Tiananmen Square. I could talk about the Salvadorian slaughterhouse down south. I could talk to you about the Iron Fist and the Iron Boot which are appearing once again in the Soviet Union. I could talk about our national violation of international law

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in Panama or Nicaragua, or about how we ourselves armed Saddam Hussein, how we supported Somoza, the cruelest dictator in the history of South America, how we even today aid Pinochet in Chile, who is nothing but a tyrant, how we may have Noriega in prison now, but how he was our stoolie for a while and we paid him and

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used our own airplanes to haul his drugs. I could talk about all of those things, for they are all of one piece. You know it is said that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made thing that is visible from the surface of the moon. It is an immense structure and yet within three months after its construction it

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was breached on four different occasions. How? Not by attacking armies, but simply by bribing the gatekeepers. No matter how much muscle a nation has, if it has lost its character, it is going to lose the day. And Jesus weeps because he sees no obedience to that love which is the divine priority. I sometimes hear people

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say, and you do too, "When I look at a world like this I find it very difficult to believe in God." I find myself in complete divergence with that thought. Indeed I would be more inclined to say, "When I look at a world like this it makes me sure there is a God." For you see, God has told us the things that make

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for peace. He has told us the only way to peace is to seek his kingdom. Other things will come after that. He has told us that there is no other way in which peace can be gained and maintained, and we have scorned his counsel. Now, having scorned his counsel, if we did succeed in gaining peace in some other way, then

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what God said to us would obviously have been wrong. And since by definition God cannot be wrong, well then I would suggest to you that the very state of the world testifies to the reality of his existence and his rightness. He said, "If you do not obey me, the world will be ripped and raped and ruined." And that is

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exactly what has happened. As we have pursued our mistaken ideals, such things do not deny God. They make the proof of him indisputable. They demonstrate that he is right, and that to ignore him is the course of folly and of pain and of death. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because it promoted not his Father's will, but

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groped blindly after its own will. And finally, the Master mourned over Jerusalem because he recognized the urgent crisis of divine opportunity. Do you remember what he said? "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, why do you not know the day of your visitation? I have longed to gather you like chicks under my wings, but you

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would not." Jesus comes as King and he is ultimately rejected. His claim was very obvious, you know, for in the ancient world the ass was the animal ridden by royalty. Oh, in times of war, royalty would ride upon the back of a horse, but in times of peace, the king would pass by riding upon the back of an ass, and just

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so, Jesus entered Jerusalem, fulfilling that prophecy in Zechariah 9 where we read, "Jerusalem, behold, your king comes to you lowly and riding on an ass." Which brings us, of course, to the most pressing question of this day, this Palm Sunday of this year. What will we do with this coming King? Jesus wept when those who

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had an opportunity lost it. Will he weep over us for the same reason? We are to be joint heirs with Christ, we are to be a royal priesthood, we are to be God's chosen ones. Will we miss all this because we rely upon the impermanent rather than upon the eternal? Will we miss what we are made to be because we

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clutch to our own selfish ideals and thus create for ourselves wars without and also wars within? Will we fail to be what the Spirit of God waits to make us because we miss the moment of his coming? Oh, I know that some of you have come to him before and have said, "I take you as my king," and you haven't found much

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change in your life, not much additional power or strength, perhaps you have not noticed any at all. To you I would say, if you saw a great fire and you put upon that fire a few buckets of water and the fire was not extinguished, would you then go out and argue that water will not extinguish a fire? Not at all. You would

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go and get more water, and with more water you would be able to put out the fire, which by implication means that Christ calls us to a depth of yieldedness, to an utter surrender, to a faithfulness forever, which may lead us to a hard and difficult service, but to what is a royal service. So let us then go forward with

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Christ. Let us leave off calling him the way, the truth, and the life, and then ignore his sovereignty. Let us march to him and let us march with him and let us march for him, for he is pure and he is peaceable and he is gentle and he is ever mindful of our need. Palm Sunday, its parade is now passing by again. Will we

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claim our place in it? Will we claim the eternal? Will we claim God's ideals? Will we redeem the time? Forward to Christ, all people, march, march today! [Music] Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today!

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Who is among us the truth can say till he has passed through the narrow way? Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! And Jesus said, "Why call me the Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say?" Why call me the Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say? You call me the life and leave me not. You call me the way and walk me not. You call me master and obey me not. If I condemn you, blame me not. Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today!

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Know that the Christ and the life are one. Know that the Christ's life has scarce begun. Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! [Music] The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, full of mercy, and without hypocrisy. And he rebuked them, saying, "You hypocrites, you whited sepulchres, you blind leaders of the blind.

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You call me bread and eat me not. You call me truth and believe me not. You call me Lord and serve me not. If I condemn you, blame me not." Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! Who then shall scorn for his name deride, till his teachings the world has tried?

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Forward to Christ, all you people, march, march today! [Music] [Music]